Shannon Nickinson: Public needs info on park progress

Shannon Nickinson

Dear Community Maritime Park Associates: Don't regret that the public has such a large role in your business.

After all, it is our business you're conducting.

It is our dime you are working on.

We are blessed to live in a state that embraces open government. Our lawmakers recognized long ago that the public's right to know what is being done in its name is fundamental.

The Community Maritime Park Board has a dim past when it comes to appreciating the public's role in its workings. And comments made this week add to that legacy.

And not in a good way.

Remember way back in 2008, two residents - Leroy Boyd and Byron Keesler - sued the board for the right to be able to speak at meetings.

Board members used to meet with their backs turned toward the public, and members were openly dismissive of citizens who wanted to speak during meetings.

The board was directed by the Pensacola City Council - which appointed some of them - to offer a public comment period and it did so grudgingly.

Now I read that board chairman Collier Merrill and Quint Studer's lawyer, Scott Remington, are disappointed that a city consultant's report on the park's finances was made public before the principals had "input."

Due respect gentlemen, but that report is paid for by the public. We get to see it first.

It's nothing personal. Honest.

You may have noticed that there is a high level of public interest in what goes on at the waterfront.

That's because there are a high number of my dollars - MY dollars - involved.

The plans for the project have changed, some of the players involved have fallen away, the economy stalled.

Naturally, we have questions.

Nearly seven years after voters first approved the idea of the project, that multimillion-dollar waterfront redevelopment project is this city's best prospect for prosperity.

I know the public can be annoying and inconvenient. I know sometimes the masses are unwashed and unruly, coarse and distrustful.

But our frustration is born, in part, out of what seems to the outside eye to be a maddening lack of clarity about what, besides things paid for by Studer, is being planned for that space and who is responsible for making it come to pass.

We the citizens have a lot of skin in this game. Things down there haven't always turned out the way we were first told they would, but we are all-in now, as the poker players say.

It's not about you.

It's about us, and our right to know what you're doing with our project.

Follow Shannon Nickinson at twitter.com/snickinson or at www.facebook.com/snickinsonpnj.

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Shannon Nickinson: Public needs info on park progress

Dear CMPA: Don't regret that the public has such a large role in your business. After all, it is our business your conducting.